Happily Ever After
by the silence in between
Summary: No matter how hard she scrubs, she can't get rid of the blood that's trapped beneath her fingernails, now a permanent part of her being.  Seven scenes of personal canon in which happily ever after is just beyond Regina's reach.


**Author****'s Note** — This story was inspired by the personal canon format of fanfic that I've seen around LiveJournal. My own personal canon for the Evil Queen/Regina is actually much more extensive than this (and it's probably all going to be Jossed by tomorrow's episode anyway), but I tried to limit myself to seven representative moments. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated. :)

**Disclaimer** — _Once Upon a Time_ is owned by ABC and Horowitz/Kitsis. I make no profit, monetary or otherwise, from the publication of this story.

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><p><strong>1.<strong>

During her first night in the dungeon, the strange man (_creature?_) with the amber irises that are too large to belong to a human asks for her necklace. It's not a valuable thing, only half a heart wrought of iron, but the request still gives her pause. It's all that Rose has left of her mother, who vanished when she was just a baby, and she cannot remember a time when the trinket did not hang around her neck, resting just above her own heart. Even after all of these years, she's never taken it off, always wanting it close by for the day that she finally finds its twin.

Rose eyes the man nervously as she clutches the half-heart, taking in the weight, shape, and texture that she's long since memorized. "It was my mother's," she whispers, already knowing the answer she will receive.

He sneers in reply. "I'm sure that it will be a great comfort to you in your coffin."

She looks around her dungeon cell at the piles of straw that litter the room, then out the high, barred window, where the sky is already beginning to take on a pale tinge. Fighting back tears, she wordlessly unfastens the clasp and places the necklace in the man's hot, sweaty palm.

Years later, in Storybrooke, Regina pores over every nook and cranny of Mr. Gold's shop, looks in every drawer and every cabinet numerous times, but she never does find her necklace.

**2.**

Rose does not marry Leopold willingly. The first time that he proposes, his eyes sweeping over her body as if she were an oasis, and he a man lost in the desert, it takes every last ounce of willpower that she possesses to keep from screaming. Never mind that she is engaged to a man whom she loves more than all the riches in the world, or that the king is old enough to be her father; she cannot look at this man without dread swirling sickeningly in her stomach, without the stench of damp straw filling her nostrils. She turns him down as politely as she can, explaining that she has already promised herself to another, but the king is persistent. "Dine with me this evening," he says, and Rose is fairly certain that it's not a request. "Just give me a chance, and I know you'll come to love me."

Leopold invites her father to supper as well, and though he casts frequent, leering glances her way, his sales pitch, maddeningly enough, seems to be directed primarily towards Henry. Over hors d'oeuvres, the king makes a series of beautiful promises, most involving the number of jewels and fine clothes that Rose will have at her disposal. "I give you my word, Henry," King Leopold swears solemnly, "that I will do whatever it takes to protect your daughter and keep her safe at my side."

To Rose's relief, her father does not appear to be moved by the king's words; she can only guess that the threat of her execution soured his opinion of the king. As the meal draws to a close and her father still shows no sign of supporting the proposal, Rose feels a great weight lift itself off of her chest. After the terror of the past three days, she is finally going to get out of this terrible place alive and be reunited with the man she loves.

Then, for dessert, the king serves them her fiancé's severed head on a silver platter. Three days later, Rose is Leopold's queen.

**3.**

At first, Rose does not care much for her stepdaughter. The girl is kind enough, she supposes, but she finds the way that Snow White's adoration for Leopold sometimes verges on worship to be more than off-putting. Rose suspects that she's not being entirely fair; she'd felt the same way about Henry, before. However, in the early months of her marriage, Rose cannot tolerate any part of Leopold. Even the ever-present weight of the sparkling diamond on her left ring finger reminds her constantly of what she has lost. So, for her first six months in the palace, Rose keeps to herself, taking long walks in the garden and making preparations for her impending arrival. It's not until she witnesses Leopold and Snow's first fight at breakfast one morning that she's jolted out of her self-imposed isolation.

Rose has paid close attention to the palace's structure, mapping out a plan for escape that she uses only in her dreams, so when Snow tries to sneak out over the garden wall, Rose is already there waiting for her. The two sit together on a white garden swing talking for hours, and for the first time in six months, Rose forgets that this place is her prison. "I'm just so worried about her," Snow confesses, playing absentmindedly with a lock of her own ebony hair. "That wolf just won't stop hunting her, and Red is so trusting that I'm afraid that she's going to fall right into its trap. I know that Father says that she's just a peasant girl, but that doesn't mean that she deserves to be eaten!"

Rose smiles genuinely as she places her hand atop Snow's. "You have a beautiful heart, Snow White," she says, and tears spring to the younger woman's eyes. "I know that it's hard, but there comes a time in every person's life when you have to choose between what you've been told and what you know in your heart to be right. If you think that you can help your friend, then I will not stand in your way."

Without warning, Snow throws her arms around her, holding her so tight, and for a moment the warmth of her embrace feels eerily familiar. It strikes Rose in the next moment, when Snow pulls away and she sees the silvery glimmer of moonlight around the teenager's neck.

"Where did you get this?" she asks, her voice barely a whisper as she frantically turns over the iron half-heart in her fingers, searching for some defect, some sign that she's mistaken.

"It was my mother's," Snow smiles sadly, her eyes misty. "She gave it to me when I was a baby."

When she confronts her father late that night, he has no words for her. "I was just trying to protect you," is all that he finally says, and it's no longer enough.

**4.**

It's not until Rumpelstiltskin is gone, vanishing without his prize in the split-second that it takes her to blink, that Rose remembers to breathe. She looks down at the wailing baby clutched tight in her arms, his face red and wet with tears, and she starts to cry with him. It's all over; he's here, safe, _hers_.

With Jacob cradled against her chest, Rose finds that life in Leopold's castle is far more bearable. In less time than she could have imagined possible, she finds that her baby has become the source of her every joy, her reason for living, her religion. All that he has to do is smile at her, or present her a crushed dandelion in his chubby fist, and all of the pain of the past few years is forgotten. Without even knowing what he's been doing, Jacob has healed her broken soul.

Of course, Leopold does not know the truth. To Rose's good fortune, Jacob favors her above all others, but she still sometimes spots fleeting glimpses of the man she's never stopped loving in her son's face. Jacob will never know his father, but Rose takes comfort in the way that Leopold dotes on the boy, and in the knowledge that her son will grow up one day to rule over her husband's kingdom.

Henry is the only other person who knows the truth. He shoots her anxious glances on nearly every visit, and his eyes automatically lower in fear every time Leopold enters the room, but Rose knows that he will keep her secret; Henry is all too aware that the fragile remains of their relationship will be irreversibly broken if he betrays her confidence. For three years, Jacob's true paternity is their little secret.

She doesn't realize at first what it is that makes her share her secret with Snow White; she only comes to understand the unusual aftertaste of her wine much later. The teen's eyes widen in disbelief at the confirmation of what she has feared, but Rose clasps her stepdaughter's pale hands in her own and pleads. "Your father can never know. He would kill us both if he did."

Though she had never planned on telling Snow the truth, Rose never worries. The two women have grown so intimate over these few short years; Snow may not know that they both called the same woman their mother, but the strength of their sororal bond is greater than that of the lie. That night, Rose rocks Jacob to sleep, using "Hush, Little Baby" to lull him into dreamland, and she feels no fear. She's come to trust Snow more than she ever trusted Henry; her little sister will not betray her.

The next morning, Rose finds her baby cold and still in his bed, and her entire world stops. _Shatters_.

**5.**

The night after Jacob's funeral, Rose sneaks out of the castle in search of Rumpelstiltskin. To her surprise, he's actually quite easy to find, though when Rose actually thinks about it, she's not sure why he'd want to make that task difficult.

When he first spots her, his features harden, frozen in what is unmistakably fury, and Rose thinks that she has made a mistake in coming to him. His expression lasts for only a moment, though, fading so quickly that she thinks that she must have imagined it, and transforms into one of gleeful amusement.

"Ohhhhhh," he sighs ecstatically, reaching out and grazing the black crêpe de Chine of her bodice with his fingertips. "Such darkness brewing in your soul."

She impatiently shoves his hand aside. "Leopold and Snow White murdered my baby. I want them _punished_."

"You want power. That doesn't come cheap." Unperturbed, defiant, he takes a strand of her dark hair and twirls it between his fingers.

Rose grits her teeth and balls her hands into tight fists, reluctantly accepting the rules of his game. "I've just lost the only thing in my life that mattered. You can have anything you want."

He smiles widely, showing every last one of his rotten teeth. His hand falls from her hair to her breast. "Even your heart?"

She grows still for a moment as she considers his terms. Through the fog of her grief, she can hear reason screaming at her that this is a terrible idea, that this creature cannot be trusted. But then she thinks of everything that Leopold and Snow have taken from her — her mother, her fiancé, her freedom, her trust, her _child_ — and remembers the feeling of Jacob's cold body cradled in her arms. She angrily wipes away the useless tears from her cheeks as her resolve steels. "_Anything_."

Beneath her ribs, her heart still beats strong and true, but now all that she feels are pain and rage. _In other words_, she thinks years later as she places Leopold's heart in its box, _nothing's changed_.

**6.**

After Henry falls to the floor, his face forever frozen in shock, she doesn't move for the longest time, just stands there hyperventilating as the reality of what she's done sinks in. His heart is still warm in her hand, sticky blood dripping through the cracks between her fingers onto the stone floor, and she cannot _breathe_. Her chest has been filled with this terrible void for years, but now it's growing larger, swallowing up her lungs, and no matter what she does, she cannot escape the cold reality of her father's motionless body splayed out on the floor.

She cleans him herself, prepares his body for burial without the aid of magic. Her hand falls still over the hole it made in his chest, and it strikes her suddenly that for all her knowledge of how to carve out a human heart, she knows nothing about how to _heal_ one. Tears fill her eyes as it hits her then, what she's just lost.

This was the man who kissed her every skinned knee; who read her tales of happy endings at bedtime each night; who raised her single-handedly after her mother decided that she wasn't worth the trouble. This was the man whose desire for wealth and prestige never allowed him to be satisfied with what little they had; who made her feel like her love would never be enough; whose selfish lie destroyed her life. This was the only man left in the world who still loved her, and now he's _gone_, his blood all over her hands.

She closes her eyes and swallows hard against the pain. "I'm so sorry, Daddy," she whispers again, and she knows that it will never be enough. "But this new world will be better. It _has_ to be."

She spends hours that night with her hands in the sink, trying to wash away the evidence of her greatest sin, but no matter how hard she scrubs, she can't get rid of the blood that's trapped beneath her fingernails, now a permanent part of her being.

**7.**

One night, about a month or two after Emma arrives in Storybrooke, Regina doesn't leave Henry's room after tucking him into bed; instead, she sinks down onto the mattress beside him and brushes her fingers through his silky brown hair. "Do you remember when you were little, and I would rock you to sleep every night?" she asks, her voice soft, fragile. "I would cradle you in my arms and sing you lullabies until you finally closed your eyes. You always fought sleep so hard, but 'Hush, Little Baby' always did the trick."

Henry stares up at her, his face blank and bored, and Regina wishes more than anything that she could know what he's thinking. "You know that you mean the world to me, right? You're my happy ending." She offers him a gentle smile, but his face remains as frustratingly impassive as ever. With a barely audible sigh, Regina strokes her son's cheek with her thumb. "I love you more than anything, Henry."

He flinches away from her touch, and in that moment, there is only disgust on his face. "You don't know how to love."

_You can have anything you want_.

Her breath catches in her chest, and for a moment she thinks that she's asphyxiating. Her hand falls limply to her side as her throat grows tight. "I did my best," she finally whispers, and she's no longer sure if it's the truth.

Henry just rolls onto his side, turning his back to her. "It's not enough anymore."


End file.
